An international event of high magnitude spawned from a grassroots effort in Southern Arizona — that’s what makes MLB’s decision special to hold the World Baseball Classic Qualifier at Kino Veterans Stadium in early March.
Baseball teams featuring the top players from Brazil, China, Colombia and Germany — including major-leaguers and prospects in the minors — will come here to play in front of a community thirsting for the sport at the highest level.
Baseball beyond college here was left for dead.
Spring training, Triple-A baseball, the Arizona Fall League and USA Baseball left Tucson more than a decade ago.
The Mexican Baseball Fiesta in recent years at Kino Stadium gave professional baseball in Tucson a pulse.
The WBC Qualifier puts high-level baseball here back on its feet.
Blake Eager, executive director of the Southern Arizona Sports, Tourism and Film Authority, is a Flowing Wells graduate who made it as high as the Double-A level in the New York Mets organization before becoming a coach and trainer. He also has operated the Hills Baseball Academy… pic.twitter.com/YlBXp2JiaG
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) November 13, 2024
“Baseball is back in Tucson in a big way,” said Blake Eager, a Tucson native, Flowing Wells grad, former New York Mets minor-league pitcher and coach of international teams from Russia and Sweden who is now the executive director of the Southern Arizona Sports, Tourism and Film Authority (SASTFA)
“It means everything in the world to me. I shared a story about growing up here and the access we had to professional baseball at a young age. When that went away, we lost a little bit of our soul and identity.”
Brazil, China, Colombia and Germany will play a round-robin schedule with games at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. on March 2-4.
The winner of the Tucson Pool qualifies for the World Baseball Classic. The second- and third-place teams play each other at 6 p.m. on March 6 for the opportunity to advance to the WBC.
Imagine the drama of that last game if it’s between Central America’s Colombia and South America’s Brazil? Those teams will play each other on the opening day, March 2, at 6 p.m.
The teams will likely also come to Tucson a week before the games to train, a boon for local hotels and restaurants. China has scheduled exhibition games against an undetermined opponent before play begins, officials indicated.
Tickets are already available to purchase by clicking here. They are presently only $15 and $25.
MLB and the MLB Players Association fund equally the cost to put together the WBC that takes place every three years. The 2026 WBC will include pool play at Houston, Miami, San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Tokyo before the championship is played in Miami. Phoenix hosted one of the pools in last year’s WBC.
That means Tucson is on this grand stage along with Taipei City, Taiwan (the other qualifier site), Houston, San Juan, Tokyo and Miami.
Tucson was set to host a WBC qualifier in 2020 but the pandemic canceled the event.
“Using a football metaphor, we were at the 2-yard line when we thought we were going to have the qualifier here,” WBC president Jim Small said. “We knew then what a special facility this is (at Kino Stadium). It suited all of our needs.
“But we also knew the reason we chose Tucson is the rich history of baseball. None of these have changed. You still have the great facility, and the great love of baseball here. We’re really excited to work with our partners from Pima County, SASFTA, the Kino Sports Complex, Visit Tucson … having all of that come together it made, to us, Tucson a no-brainer.”
World Baseball Classic president Jim Small comments about having the qualifier competition for the 2026 WBC at Kino North Stadium from March 2-6. The round-robin event that will include Brazil, China, Colombia and Brazil will have two teams advancing to the WBC. Small indicated… pic.twitter.com/jfqgOGlP36
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) November 13, 2024
The Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Presented by Gin & Juice By Dre and Snoop is also involved helping with the operations of the event, including ticket sales.
Some of the most influential power hitters in the county and city came to the plate again for Tucson after coming so close to getting a hit five years ago before COVID-19 shut things down.
The list of dignitaries include Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher, Pima County Chair of the Board of Supervisors Adelita Grijalva, Visit Tucson President and CEO Felipe Garcia and SASFTA board member Edgar Soto and Eager.
Eager credits the WBC qualifier staged in Tucson as the “brainchild” of Soto, a former Tucson High standout player and coach who has also coached at Pima College and served as the Aztecs’ athletic director.
He is now the vice president of Pima’s Desert Vista campus.
Edgar Soto explains his vision of bringing baseball back to Tucson in a grand way. That was brought to fruition with the World Baseball Qualifier coming to the Kino Stadium in the spring. Soto was raised in Tucson and graduated from Tucson High in 1987, when he led the Badgers to… pic.twitter.com/FPiYqQm2HT
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) November 13, 2024
Soto said that the idea of bringing the WBC to Tucson started in 2018 after he became the dean of Arts and Humanities at Pima and he met Arizona Film & Digital Media Program director Matthew Earl Jones. They talked about including film as part of the Tucson Sports and Tourism Authority.
“All these things started moving, some things started happening and we thought, ‘Maybe there is a place for baseball here again,'” Soto said.
He met Arizona state senator David Gowan and they worked together to bring the WBC to Southern Arizona to benefit Pima County and the surrounding counties.
Gowan is a lifelong Dodgers fan who said “he was on board” with Soto’s effort after Soto showed Gowan — a Los Angeles Dodgers fan — photos of Fernando Valenzuela at Pima College, where Valenzuela was conducting a Mexican national team practice.
That was when Soto was part of the USA Baseball coaching staff with the 18U team in 2001. USA Baseball was based in Tucson at the time.
“The goal is to bring economic impact to Southern Arizona,” Soto said. “With that comes good jobs and livable wages so people can live meaningful lives.”
Local dignitary Edgar Soto officially announces the World Baseball Classic qualifier is coming to the Kino Sports Complex this spring. pic.twitter.com/kSp1Oj2BSY
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) November 12, 2024
Soto, a Democrat who recently ran for Pima County Supervisor in District 3, got the ball rolling working his contacts with Gowan, a Republican who serves in an area consisting of all of Greenlee County and sections of Pima, Cochise, Graham and Santa Cruz counties.
Putting aside political differences shows that “baseball can bring people together,” Soto said.
No better example than countries and cultures from Brazil, China, Colombia and Germany mixing with that of Tucson for a week in early March.
“I am excited for a lot of our elementary schools, middle schools, high schools to come out and attending these games and interacting,” Soto said. “(Participating players are) going to be staying at our hotels. They are going to be hanging out in our community, eating at our restaurants.
“There’s so much opportunity to learn from each other and build community at a global level.”
From a competitive standpoint, Small mentioned that pool play in Tucson to qualify for the WBC “will be some of the biggest games they’ll play,” referring to players of the participating countries.
“In the last WBC, we saw a team from the Czech Republic qualify through the qualifying system in Germany and make it to Tokyo,” Small said. “It absolutely changed baseball in the Czech Republic. I went there last September, went to the European championships. … 27,000 people were going to baseball games in the Czech Republic. … It’s life changing.
“Fans in Tucson are going to be able to see that. They’re going to see the passion. They’re going to know that everything is on the line for these guys. Even though they don’t know the names of some of the players, that will come through. It will be something really special.”
The kids attending the event will be impacted the most with lifelong memories, similar to when Soto was a child attending Cleveland Indians spring training games at Hi Corbett Field.
“We all felt the loss when spring training left (Tucson in 2010),” Soto said. “It was a sad time. I can remember during spring training there was a game when Reggie Jackson was with the California Angels.
“He hit a foul ball … I grabbed the ball — I had Reggie Jackson’s foul ball — and I’m walking through the annex there at Reid Park and I run into Rod Carew. He signs the baseball. I still have that baseball. …
“To be able to do this and to have a part of it, it just means the world, not just for me, because if we do it right, and we set up the dominos the right way, it’s not just going to impact this generation but for generations to come.”
ACTIVE PROS WITH TIES TO COUNTRIES IN TUCSON WBC QUALIFIER POOL
Brazil
- Yan Gomes: Catcher who is a free agent. He has previously played for the Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, Washington Nationals, Oakland Athletics, and Chicago Cubs.
China
- None
Colombia
- José Quintana: Pitcher who is a free agent. He has played for the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Angels, San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets.
- Julio Teherán: Pitcher for the Sultanes de Monterrey of the Mexican League. He has previously played for the Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Mets
- Donovan Solano: Infielder who is a free agent. He has played for the Miami Marlins, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds, Minnesota Twins, and San Diego Padres.
- Giovanny Urshela: Third baseman who is a free agent. He has played for the Cleveland Indians, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers, and Atlanta Braves.
Germany
- Max Kepler: An outfielder for the Minnesota Twins who trained in Germany before being signed at age 16.
- Brendan Donovan: A utility man for the St. Louis Cardinals.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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